


things got weird

by Fatale (femme)



Category: New Girl
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 10:22:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13878879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femme/pseuds/Fatale
Summary: Nick’s doing his weekly perusal of Goodwill and stumbles across what is, frankly, a devastatingly handsome oversized fur coat. It smells like mothballs and has some bare patches, but it’s fancy -- fancy like Elton John, someone he has great admiration for. Nick would also like a tiny dancer to hold him close.





	things got weird

**Author's Note:**

> Season 4, I guess. After nick and jess break up, but before they buy a bar.

 

 

 

 

Nick’s doing his weekly perusal of Goodwill and stumbles across what is, frankly, a devastatingly handsome oversized fur coat. It smells like mothballs and has some bare patches, but it’s fancy -- fancy like Elton John, someone he has great admiration for. Nick would also like a tiny dancer to hold him close.

It’s half-price day, so he gets it for just under $20, which Nick thinks is a _steal_. He slaps down two rolls of quarters, telling the cashier to keep the change like some kind of Rockefeller. He slips the coat over his shoulders, thinking this coat is going to change his life. His unpublished novel, his dead-end job, his gnawing and all-consuming loneliness -- this coat is clearly the way out.

People on the sidewalk give him a wide berth, eyes dropping as they pass him, obviously a sign of deference. He’s a king, and he’s finally getting his due in life. One of his fiefs hands him a five dollar bill and looking sad, tells him to go buy himself a sandwich, which he does gladly.

At the apartment, he swirls inside, a flurry of drama that usually only Schmidt can manage and generally for all the wrong reasons. “I have arrived,” he announces, holding his coat open triumphantly.

“If you’re trying to be a creepy flasher, you forgot to take your clothes off,” Jess says from the couch, balancing a bowl of popcorn on her knees, barely looking up from the TV.

“We live close to a school zone, you probably shouldn’t,” Winston advises, nose stuffy and eyes red, grabbing a handful of popcorn. They’re watching some kind of sad chick flick on the TV, crumpled tissues scattered around them.

“Is that sable?” Schmidt asks from the kitchenette.

“If sable means fabulous, then yes,” Nick tells him.

“It does _not_ ,” Schmidt says, slicing what looks like a pomegranate because Schmidt’s a freak. “You look like my bubbe _after_ the dementia set in.”

Nick honestly can’t understand folks like Schmidt and Jess, the type of people that have separate drawers for their socks and underwear instead of stuffing them wherever they’ll fit. He’s taken to keeping his socks in empty Pringles cans, which as both a bonus and a detraction, means they always smell like sour cream and onion. He can find socks easily and he smells delicious, win/win.

“You’re just jealous,” Nick says, hugging his coat closer. If he closes his eyes, it feels like a musty hug. He feels a little betrayed, honestly. He’s put up with Schmidt dressing like all the members of Fall Out Boy respectively, and he doesn’t think he’s asking too much for a little bit of the same quiet dignity. Okay, so he made Schmidt contribute to the douchebag jar each time, but still.

“I just don’t want to wear flannel shirts all the time,” he admits.

“No one makes you wear them,” Schmidt points out.

“I have seventeen flannel shirts and trust me, they aren’t going to wear themselves.”

“You can borrow one of my shirts,” Winston offers unhelpfully. Winston dresses like a rockstar, if that rockstar also happened to shop at Tommy Bahama.

“Nick, take off the coat,” Schmidt demands.

“I’m not taking the coat off,” Nick whispers, mostly to himself.

Jess blows her nose unattractively from the couch and Winston covers the popcorn bowl with two outstretched hands. “Nick, it is objectively awful, like people who wear wrap-around reflective sunglasses and eat low-calorie ice cream. _Take the damn coat off_.”

He doesn’t have to stand here and take this bullshit.

Nick stomps towards his room, muttering, “I’m not taking the coat off.” He kicks the mound of Twinkies out of his way, purchased by the cart-load when he thought the company was going out of business, throws himself on the bed and pulls his coat over his head like a little kid hiding from the world. It smells a little like pee and mothballs and sadness, so what?

A knock on the door makes him groan. “Go away,” he yells.

Schmidt pokes his head in and takes a look around. The bed dips as he sits down at the foot of the bed. “I feel like there’s something else going on here,” he says.

Nick could lie, but Schmidt would just persist until he got Nick to tell him the truth, might as well get it over with. “I just want to look fabulous, is that so hard to believe?”

“This is really early for a midlife crisis.”

How do you explain to someone who uses 26 products in the shower what it’s like to look in the mirror and feel like a failure, an absolute mess of a man who once ate a Panini out of the trashcan? Wearing a shitty fur coat might be stupid, may actually make him look like more of a lunatic than he already is, but -- it makes him feel better. And very few things do these days.

He’s no Julius Pepperwood; he has no alligator within.

He’s just shitty old Nick Miller, a bartender from a highly suspect family, who is watching his friends surpass him in every way that matters.

“I don’t know what to tell you, man, it just makes me feel good,” he says tiredly. “I may not have Jess, a law degree, or any prospects, but I do have this coat.”

Schmidt looks at him for a minute, then sighs. “Okay, fine,” he says, flopping on the bed next to him, makes a face and pulls out a Pringles can from beneath his back. “Told you to stop putting your socks in these.”

Nick takes the can with interest. “Ohh, barbecue-flavored socks. I know what I’ll be wearing tomorrow.”

Nick thinks for a minute, then pulls an arm out of his coat and spreads half over Schmidt. Everyone needs a little comfort now and again.

“It’s all warm,” Schmidt says, grinning with surprise.

“See? That’s what I’m talking about. Feels like a hug, doesn’t it?”

“Smells of urine a little bit,” Schmidt says.

“That it does,” Nick agrees dreamily. “That it does.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
